This invention relates to authentication of entities represented in social networking systems in general and in particular to authenticating a persona in a social networking system.
Social networking systems store user profile information provided by users including but not limited to hometown, current city, education history, employment history, photos, and events the user participated in the user's profile. Users utilize social networking systems because social networking systems allow them to create connections with friends and interact with each other. Social networking systems allow users to view other user's profile, organize events, and invite friends to participate in those events.
Social networking systems provide various types of functionality to users to communicate with each other, for example, by using wall posts, private messages, poking, and the like. These communication mechanisms allow users to exchange information with each others. Social networking systems also allow a user to share information with other users, for example, by posting content on the social networking system. A user can post an image, video, or text content so that other users can access it. A user can also make information describing the user's user profile information accessible to other users. This allows other users to learn about the user.
Certain users, for example, celebrities play certain roles that may be different from their private lives. For example, a movie actor or a television celebrity may play a certain role that is popular amongst users. Some celebrities may want to make certain specific aspects of their profile available to other users. As a result, such users make a special web page available via the social networking system that provides the information they want to make available to other users. This type of information made available by a celebrity can be very popular in the social networking system and may be accessed by a large number of users.
However, if certain information is very popular in the social networking system, other users attempt to make fake copies of the information, for example, to attract web traffic. These fake copies are created and maintained by users that may be unrelated to the original user, for example, the original celebrity. As a result, the information provided in these fake copies is often incorrect and may mislead fans of the celebrity. A fan of the celebrity who looks for information would like to find the authentic information provided by the celebrity rather than fake information provided by another user that is unrelated to the celebrity. Social networking systems would like to direct fans or other users to the authentic information provided by a celebrity rather than fake information.
Conventional systems perform manual verification wherein the social networking system directly contacts the celebrity and verifies which information was provided by the celebrity. Since this process is a manual process, it is not scalable since human intervention is required. If the social networking system has a large number of accounts, determining the authentic personas can be a resource intensive process.
A social networking system maintains personas describing entities represented in the social networking system. Each persona is associated with a web page hosted by the social networking system. For example, a celebrity can create a persona describing the celebrity using the social networking system. Users of the social networking system unrelated to a celebrity may also create fake personas purporting to be the celebrity to attract web traffic. The social networking system determines whether a persona is authentic or fake based various connections and interactions between the persona and other entities, possible within and outside of the social networking system. The social networking system may use this determination to direct users to the authentic persona and avoid the fake personas.
In one embodiment, the social networking system determines the authenticity of a persona based on the number or the amount of web traffic directed to a web page in the social networking system that is associated with the persona by one or more external systems. A persona may be determined to be authentic if the web traffic directed to the persona by external systems exceeds a threshold or exceeds the web traffic directed to other personas describing the same entity. In one embodiment, the external system is a search engine, and the traffic is directed to the web page associated with the persona from a search results page of the search engine. The search terms used to obtain the search results page may also be considered in determining the authenticity of the persona (e.g., if the search terms are more related to the persona, the incoming traffic from the search results page may be more indicative of the authenticity of the persona). In another embodiment, the external system is an external web server, and the incoming web traffic is from a web page having a link to the persona. Similarly, the content of the external web page may be considered in determining the authenticity of the persona (e.g., if the web page is more related to the persona, the incoming traffic from the web page may be more indicative of the authenticity of the persona).
The authenticity of a persona may be determined as a weighted aggregate of scores assigned to the external system that direct web traffic to the persona. The weight assigned to the measure of authenticity of the external pages may be determined based on the amount of traffic directed towards the persona that is generated by external systems.
The features and advantages described in this summary and the following detailed description are not all-inclusive. Many additional features and advantages will be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of the drawings, specification, and claims.
The figures depict various embodiments of the present invention for purposes of illustration only. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from the following discussion that alternative embodiments of the structures and methods illustrated herein may be employed without departing from the principles of the invention described herein.